So I forced the CABs to my HTC Trophy on Verizon and I love the 7.8 update. Some things I've noticed:

The tiles are much swifter. They now have the same effects as (I assume) Windows Phone 8. When watching commercials for WP 8, I merely thought these nice and much faster movements were faked to make it look cleaner on the commercial. Glad to see its not the case. It looks far more professional

The animations involving the tiles from the home screen or app list when choosing and entering an app are much more "crisp." I have not once had it just skip the animation and go into the app (normally 3rd party apps would trigger this activity) like it used to in 7.5.

The app search button is a mess. If you go to your app list and hit the search button you'll see that it becomes this pixelated mess and shrinks slightly. Its not a big deal but kind of annoying if I were to utilize the button often... Which I do not. This is much like Service Pack 2 for Windows XP which made red lines appear around the folder icons in a "copy" or "move" dialogue box when the paper hit the folder. I was always baffled by this lack of polish. But ahhh, I digress. Really though, why did this need to be changed at all, and why wasn't it done right? Or maybe I'm the only one that is experiencing this. The right hand arrow at the bottom of the home screen is perfectly fine.

I know that there have been varying results with the update and that's to be expected. I thought I'd share what I noticed about the update. Any little quirks with your phones?

For me, the one feature I was hoping for is the screen capture function. Unfortunately, it was not included in the 7.8 update.
I kind of want it badly as I was pretty envious of how the WP8 owners can capture their personalized start screens & fav themes and post them in this forum.
Praying the next update will include this.
Despite the omission, the 7.8 that I forced updated 2 days ago make me love my Stormtrooper 900 even more.
I JUZ LOVE WINDOWS PHONE ;)

Strange. There is another thread about how slowly the tiles respond from the start screen. How about music controls from the lock screen? There is a thread that they are now gone from the lock screen. Can you confirm that? Does pushing the volume hardware rocker make them appear as it does now in WP7.5? I'm trying to decide whether to upgrade or not.

Oh wow, I hadn't listened to music since I did the update Thurs night. The lock screen controls are just like WP8 now, always part of a drop down instead of looking like part of the screen. Not my favorite change, but whatever.

As for pixelated images when searching the app list, I don't have it, they look as clean as ever.

@lippidp The music controls on the lock screen are indeed there. And actually they're improved! I hadn't noticed as I don't use my phone for music too often. They pop up when turning on the screen during music playback. No need to even hit the volume rocker to bring up the controls - Very nice. The animation that brings it out is also nice.

@jaethos It's not anything DURING search... Its the search magnifying glass button - When "pushed down" it pixelates. (When its in the "down" state and turns white)

Unsure why everyone is upset by not getting the update through zune. Just do it manually or with seveneighter. Its extremely easy. Just make sure you select the correct languages. I was thoroughly surprised at the lack of problems I encountered. Maybe mine was an anomaly...

I've noticed a degradation in system performance with this update (possibly due to the amount of tiles now visible on my start screen at once). But when ever I launch an app on startscreen, there's now a ~3 second delay before the transition effect begins. Sometimes I wonder if I tapped properly and then it jumps into the app.

@lippidp The music controls on the lock screen are indeed there. And actually they're improved! I hadn't noticed as I don't use my phone for music too often. They pop up when turning on the screen during music playback. No need to even hit the volume rocker to bring up the controls - Very nice. The animation that brings it out is also nice.

With WP7, the music functions were superimposed on the background image of the lock screen. Like how the date and time is, except at the top of the screen. You could see song title and artist at anytime the lock screen was on, and hit next track, pause, etc. You never need to hit the volume rocker on the lock screen, except to change volume.

In 7.8, the black box with controls will slide down when you first turn on the screen, but then slide back up after a second or two. You have to hit the volume rocker to get the black box to slide back down to get to the music controls after that 1-2 second showing. The nice-looking and always-there superimposition is gone. This is worse.